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How Much is Enough? Productivity in the AI Era · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  [ on-hold music] This episode of Content Briefly is brought to you by our friends at Ahrefs. Do you want to make your business discoverable in search, AI, and beyond?
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  Sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools with the link in the show notes to improve your website's SEO performance and grow your traffic from search. Hey, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly.
• 0:59
  Today, Eric, Chloe, and I are talking through another handful of existential changes happening in content marketing right now, and that topic is productivity.
• 1:07
  I feel that productivity has always been sort of nebulous in the context of knowledge work, but AI makes that challenge far more difficult. A couple of things we talk through. One, how do you know what is enough?
• 1:19
  How do you structure a workday so that you feel that you've accomplished the things you've meant to accomplish? How do you fight some of the distractions that are out there?
• 1:26
  How do you invest time in research and tinkering and R&D while still getting all of your work done? We talk through all of this.
• 1:34
  I found, actually, it to be quite cathartic 'cause it's something I've been thinking about a lot. And I actually think it's a very nice plug for Superpath Pro.
• 1:40
  You know, I talk about this on every podcast, but the main pitch I'll make today is, you know, content really is changing so much, and if you feel like you're the only one, like feeling like maybe you're going crazy or these changes are just so extreme, you're not, I promise.
• 1:53
  There are hundreds of content marketers in the Superpath Slack talking about this stuff all the time, so there's an opportunity to, to get support, to vent a bit, to offer your support to others, to crowdsource ideas, be a fly on the wall.
• 2:04
  So many good things happening. Plus, there's other structured ways to connect with other content marketers through our one-on-ones and our monthly group calls too. So you can learn all about that at superpath.co.
• 2:12
  All right, I'll get out of the way. Enjoy this episode with Eric and Chloe. Hey, everybody. Jimmy from Superpath. Thanks for tuning in to another ep. Back with Eric Doty and Chloe Thompson.
• 2:20
  Thompso, as we call her in Slack. [laughs] And, uh, she doesn't like it. She-- [chuckles] I think you'll warm up to it, Chloe. The Thomper? [laughs] Oh, I like that. There you go. That's a new handle.
• 2:32
  Um- [laughs] We're gonna need to work on that. We have a cool new Slack channel where we talk about the podcast and throw out ideas, and Eric threw out this, what I think is a great idea, actually. Productivity.
• 2:42
  What does it mean right now? I feel like it was ambiguous before, now [chuckles] it's worse. Eric, maybe I'll just throw it over to you.
• 2:47
  Will you kinda talk through, like, the genesis of this idea, like what got you thinking about it, and then, uh, I feel like there's a couple, like, key points we should hit on it too. Yeah, for sure.
• 2:55
  So there's kinda two places this idea came from.
• 2:59
  So if you listen to my very first appearance as, like, a guest on the podcast three or four years ago when I joined Doc, I was, like, the strong advocate for still being a very output-focused content marketer that, like, speed of delivery was still a really important quality to, like, value in being a good content marketer.
• 3:20
  'Cause you can talk about quality and, you know, that kinda thing all day, but at, at the end of the day, it's still our job to drive results for our company, and part of that comes from working quickly.
• 3:31
  And so that's kind of one of, like, the core values that I held for myself as, like, my own identity as a content marketer on, like, how do I scale myself up to work at a good, like, quantity and speed?
• 3:44
  And now that AI is in the world, that kind of-- Not only does that give everyone that capability, but it also means that, like, quantity is and speed is, like, maybe less valuable.
• 3:59
  Maybe not speed, but at least quantity is, because we can all produce infinitely, so, like, your individual output is less connected to this concept of, like, personal productivity.
• 4:09
  So that's-- I'll just, like, put that thought in, like, bucket over one over here before I move on.
• 4:14
  The bigger reason I've been thinking about this is, like, I used to sit down for an eight-hour workday or, like, you know, six to nine hours, whatever it is.
• 4:23
  I would have maybe two to three hours of, like, very thought-intensive, difficult work and maybe five hours of, you know, editing this blog post- Stuff... uploading. Yeah.
• 4:34
  Yeah, uploading this to Webflow, write a little LinkedIn post. Like, the bulk of the job was pretty easy or, like, a skill I developed, and I was pretty good at it, and I could crank it out.
• 4:45
  And it wasn't thoughtless, but it was not so thoughtful.
• 4:50
  But I feel like a lot of those tasks now I can-- What maybe it used to take an hour of my day to, like, write a couple LinkedIn posts, now I throw them back and forth, and ChatGPT took me fifteen minutes, and I have forty-five minutes back.
• 5:04
  What that has not done for me is given me forty-five minutes of free time because I'm employed by a company that expects me to basically do as much output as possible, right? Like, I'm a one-person marketing team.
• 5:16
  It's my job to, like, help our startup grow as quickly as possible. There's demands on that. We have, like, limited resources, limited time.
• 5:25
  I'm not in the same position as a freelancer, for example, who can say, "Okay, like I did the work for the client. I did it in as little time as possible. They're happy. My job's done.
• 5:33
  I've got four hours left in my day, and I can go walk my dog." Like, that's just not the world I live in, right? I'm expected to be sort of maximally productive.
• 5:40
  And so now in this new world, I have very little rote tasks to do or, like, undemanding tasks, and I'm now [chuckles] sitting here facing, like, eight hours a day of, like, demanding work.
• 5:53
  And so the weird irony of AI taking all the easy work off my plate is now I feel like I have only very hard work on my plate.
• 6:01
  And so that's also given me a new relationship with productivity, where I feel like I'mSitting here doing like, okay, who's my ICP? I really need to understand my customer. How many sales calls should I...
• 6:15
  Like, I'm doing this kind of different style of work, less just pure production, because that's almost like a solved problem. But now at the end of the day, I'm like, "Did I do anything today?
• 6:24
  Did I just learn all day, and did I get anything out of that?" Like, should I have just have been writing blog posts instead? You know, like, I have a new
• 6:32
  relationship with productivity where I'm much less certain about what it means. Wait, is, is learning all day a bad thing if it's helping you with more quality output? Yeah, of course, it's not a bad thing.
• 6:43
  I think what I'm getting at and, like, where I'd like to start this discussion is, like, I think I used to have a very good sense of what productivity felt like and looked like.
• 6:51
  It was some balance of output and quality and results for the company, and now I have a much more uncertain relationship with productivity now that, like, output is something that's easier to achieve, and all the work feels hard.
• 7:06
  Totally agree. I feel like there's a couple different AI angles here. Like, I don't feel, at least for me personally, I don't feel that it's, like, scooped up all the easy work for me, at least not yet.
• 7:15
  But I do feel that I spend a lot of time on what I like to call R&D, but is often just tinkering that leads me nowhere.
• 7:23
  You know, I, like, think I can automate a thing, and I try, and I spend a few hours doing it, only to find out that I can't do it. Or, like, that it will actually take way longer than I thought.
• 7:33
  And then I'm like, "Well, actually doing it the old way is really not that bad." [chuckles] And I feel like for many people, this is a learning... Like, this is a phase of work that entails a lot of learning.
• 7:44
  Because the tools are relatively new. They're changing a lot. So I feel like we all kinda have to, like, sort out which ones are we gonna learn, which ones actually help us, and then...
• 7:53
  But to your point, Eric, I feel like it just deepens the, you know, already, like, very vague idea of productivity that previously existed in knowledge work.
• 8:04
  And, like, for me personally, I think of, like, productivity as, like... Like, I personally struggle with distractions. Like, the internet is just incredibly distracting, and I really struggle with that.
• 8:13
  And so for me it's like, okay, d- was it a good day? One, did I stay on task? Like, did I not waste time? That's the big one. And then the other one is, did I do deep work?
• 8:22
  Whether it was writing, editing, researching, like, there's a... It just feels good, and I like that, so if I have a good feeling at the end of it, I'm happy with that.
• 8:31
  And then there's kinda this whole bucket of other work that you were talking about, which I feel like everyone sorta has that, like, bucket of other stuff, and I have no idea how to make sense of that. Like, I just...
• 8:42
  You just have to do it, I guess. So it's just ba- Like, doing it feels like baseline, but then it starts over again the next day and sort of, like, feels bad all over again, you know?
• 8:52
  I, I think that the tinkering is an interesting one, because I have not spent as much time, I think, with AI tools as the both of you have, from what I gather of our conversations.
• 9:03
  And for me, I think that's because I would be nervous about expending all of that energy to, like Jimmy, exactly what you just said, to be like, "Okay, can I do this? Can I automate? Can I build this?"
• 9:17
  And then all of a sudden, three hours go by, and I've kind of not done anything. So it's almost like...
• 9:23
  And I get what you're saying, because if you get to the end result that you're trying to get to, you could potentially save yourself hours.
• 9:30
  So it's a trade-off, but then I'm wondering, does the conversation change around almost having an allowance of these, like, mini hackathons throughout, like, your week or your day, where essentially your boss, your manager, whatever, they're like, "We know you're gonna spend X hours trying to build this, and that's okay."
• 9:53
  So it's almost like, is it baked into the permission of your role now, if you even wanna go down that road?
• 9:59
  For me, the times that I've tried to use ChatGPT to help me draft or edit even, like, LinkedIn posts or whatever, I go back and forth with it so much. I can't say that it's necessarily helping me be better in that sense.
• 10:14
  So I don't think I've quite figured out how to make it work the best for me.
• 10:19
  Yeah, so I had these conversations a lot too previously with respect to just automation, even before we were in a, an AI world, 'cause I would, you know, make... And Jimmy, it's the same way.
• 10:28
  We'd tinker with zaps and stuff like that. And you could spend four hours trying to automate something and realize you coulda just done it by hand in three hours.
• 10:36
  And so I think in that world, my advice was always, like, things that you know are already gonna take up a huge amount of time, those are the things to automate, and that's where the productivity with tinkering is for me.
• 10:48
  It's like, okay, I know I'm gonna have to do 1,000 blog posts over my career with Dock.
• 10:54
  Like, it is worth investing 20 hours, 30 hours, 50 hours of time in trying to find things to make blog posts more efficient, because I already know that, like, that's a channel that is valuable for us, and I have to...
• 11:07
  If I can speed that up and scale it up, like, it, it will result in gains for us, right? And so, like, that's where I think you can say for sure, like, this is the good tinkering bucket.
• 11:16
  There's, like, an unproductive tinkering bucket of, like, thing you already m- might not end up doing, and then you end up tinkering in that space for a long time.
• 11:25
  Or, like, for me, where I end up tinkering a lot of time away is just, like, research. And I think... I think it was Rosie Campbell had a good LinkedIn post about this the other day.
• 11:33
  Like, for her, like, as a freelance writer, research is her procrastination.
• 11:37
  You get halfway through a blog, and you're like, "Hmm, I could add more backstory to this," and you spend like six more hours in the weeds reading things. And I think I end up in the same place sometimes.
• 11:48
  It's like in the in-house spot, I'm like, "Hmm, I could do eight hours of competitor research today," and just sit there, like, spinning my wheels.
• 11:54
  And at the end of the day, I'm making ChatGPT do deep research, and it, I end up actually nowhere f- more forward than I was when I started.
• 12:02
  So I think, like, part of this is just, like, yeah, like you said, Chloe, is bucketing the time for tinkering and random ChatGPT-ery. I love that. I love that verb. Yeah. That's a tough one. Yeah. That's good.
• 12:15
  Putting tinkering in a box is a great point, Chloe, because if you don't, it will just leak- It's almost-... into the rest of your day... we need, like, the Pomodoro Technique, but for ChatGPT or something.
• 12:25
  Like, if you can't figure it out- Yeah... within the first30, 45 minutes or whatever, like move on. Try to use your brain for something else.
• 12:33
  But I guess this is the existential question I think around content marketing as a whole, but I would argue, like, if you spend eight hours doing competitor research
• 12:46
  because, you know, you don't have a product marketing team or because you don't have those resources at hand, I would argue that's a great way to, to spend a day as long as you already have, you know, your other tasks finished.
• 13:03
  Like, I used to spend, or I used to try to block out, like, Friday afternoons to be like, "Okay, I'm gonna listen to customer calls," or, "I'm gonna go literally lurk on our Slack channels and just, like, absorb and learn everything I can."
• 13:16
  I never saw that as a waste of time because I would get ideas, I would get ways to, like, refine our content.
• 13:23
  So I think that might be the breakdown in terms of content marketers that are more the quantity output driven versus more of like a content strategist, and I do think we are seeing, like, the breakdown between that, which is a massively different topic.
• 13:39
  But I think that the AI conversation kind of hits on that, 'cause to me, I'm like, this all feeds into your content.
• 13:46
  And scaling and automating 1,000 blogs actually scares me because I'm like, "Okay, what kind of quality are we actually gonna get out of it?" But to your point, it's all about what is the output that's expected?
• 14:00
  What are the goals you're actually trying to do? Like, what is your punch list and task list?
• 14:03
  I've discovered this new thing recently related to AI, which is because its ability to do bigger tasks is always increasing, like, it takes longer sometimes.
• 14:14
  So, like, for example, like, I use Claude and Perplexity a lot. You can ask either of those tools to do, like, a version of, like, deep research, where instead of giving you an instant answer, it takes 10 minutes.
• 14:24
  And I find those to be-- Like, I do it, I send it off, and then I'm like, "Well, what do I do?" And then I go on YouTube. [laughs] Like, now I feel...
• 14:31
  It's like I am simultaneously getting the work done that I wanted to get done and, like, indulging this thing I've been trying to, like, resist all day long. I'm like, "Did it net out back to zero?
• 14:43
  [laughs] Or am I worse?" I don't really know. You know? But I always-- I don't know if this is just me. I just generally feel bad about productivity. Like, I never feel good about it.
• 14:52
  So, like, the end of the day, I'm never like, "Oh, I feel like I accomplished what I needed to do today." It's much more like, "I guess I'll just give up now," because it's like I have to move on with the day.
• 15:01
  You know what I mean? Yeah. I've been thinking of it in terms of focus, and I think that's where I landed is, like, do I feel like I was focused all day? And I do kinda wanna...
• 15:09
  I was thinking about this before we talked, and I think there's been a few stages of how we think about productivity. And when I posted this on LinkedIn, I got some kind of reactions, and I feel like some people are
• 15:21
  still thinking in maybe a previous stage, so I wanted to flesh it out a little bit. So, like, I think the old way of work productivity was, like, we had eight hours a week or eight hours a day in the office.
• 15:31
  Your boss saw you were sitting in the chair from nine o'clock to five o'clock, and, like, as long as you did that, you had a productive day, like, for the most part. Like, there was some output.
• 15:41
  Like, there were expectations of you, but I don't think people had as many, like, existential crises about, like, "Was I productive at work today?"
• 15:48
  As long as you were sitting in the office, for the most part, like, check, right?
• 15:52
  And then COVID happened, and then all this remote-- there's this remote work shift, and we kinda had to have this, like, w-what does it mean to have a productive work day when no one's looking over your shoulder?
• 16:05
  And I think we ended up with, like, a healthier relationship with work for the most part, where it was like, "As long as I know that you got the job done, I don't really care if it took you six hours or eight hours," and this sort of startup-y mentality of, like, infinite time off and we just have a job to do, and as long as we're doing it, I don't really care what you do, right?
• 16:22
  Like, I think that's kind of the world a lot of us are in now. But what's interesting is, like, as a boss of somebody in that environment, like, I knew roughly what a good output looked like, right?
• 16:32
  Like, if I hired a content writer, like, I knew what to expect from them, versus now if I hired...
• 16:37
  In terms of, like, you need to do this many blog posts a week, this many social media posts, like, I knew what their calendar should look like, versus now, like, I don't really know.
• 16:47
  And, like, m-maybe I just have, like... I think it was Ryan Baum told me, like, I'm, like, LARPing as a American worker, I think were the terms he used. [laughs] And I think it was Katie.
• 16:56
  It was like, you're like, "Okay, I've got this, like, internalized idea of, like, I have to be sitting here and doing the work and, like, banging keys and hammering things."
• 17:06
  But, like, maybe in this world where, like, all production is infinite, we just have to rethink that a little bit.
• 17:12
  And so I think that I'm trying to get to back to my original point of, like, it's a little more existential than it was before in terms of, like, what does it mean to have a productive work day?
• 17:22
  And the way I'm trying to think of it is, like, hold myself to my old output targets, at least hit those, and then, like, f-feel like I'm filling in the gaps with, like, additional value add.
• 17:32
  So yeah, like, I'm spending more time listening to customer calls now, which I'm happy about, like, to really get a sense of customer language and things like that.
• 17:39
  I'm doing more product marketing things, like, I'm the wider T that we've talked about in the past.
• 17:44
  Like, I'm making sure that I can do sort of m-more without just, like, having this total existential crisis about, like- Yeah. [laughs]... what it means to be content marketing, right?
• 17:54
  But I'm still making sure I check the box of, like, I did two blog posts this week or whatever, right?
• 17:57
  Like, I feel like I'm trying to just not let it feel totally overwhelming, and I know that other people are feeling this too, 'cause when I posted this, I got-- Like, I've never had so many comments so quickly on anything I've written where everyone said, "I'm feeling exactly this," and couldn't put it into words.
• 18:10
  In a while. So it feels weird to say out loud, but, like, I think we're all trying to figure this out right now. Yeah. That's so interesting.
• 18:18
  I feel like when you posed this idea in Slack, Eric, the first thing I thought was like, "Well, you gotta focus more on results now."
• 18:24
  Like, that's a clear indication of are you doing a, quote unquote, like, a good job or not.
• 18:28
  But then I was thinking more about that, and I feel like-That's the exact same slippery slope as did I, you know, publish X things this week. And I was thinking back, like my Animals days when I was doing sales,
• 18:41
  you know, like we'd always ask people, first thing in a sales call, like, "Why'd you reach out? Like, you know, what's going on?" And everybody... not everybody, a lot of people would say the same thing.
• 18:47
  "Well, like we're just not getting enough traffic." And then as part of our intake process, we would get access to their Google Analytics, and like, it, it's all over the place.
• 18:56
  Like, companies that were getting what seemed like insane amounts of traffic were saying like, "Gosh, if we could just double it, you know, then we'd feel good." But that's just... It's a treadmill, you know.
• 19:04
  Like whether you're getting 10 people on the website or 100,000- That's not really what they're saying.
• 19:09
  They're saying, "We wanna increase the traffic because we think that's gonna lead to more demos and more conversions," right?
• 19:15
  It's like it goes back to the heart of like outputs being linked to more attribution, and ROI on content, which is like a whole 'nother downstream that we could talk about. Yeah. Um,
• 19:28
  but I always think like publishing for publishing's sake is never a good, you know, strategy or tactic. So I don't know.
• 19:38
  I think it'd be interesting, like Eric, if, if you told me, "Oh, I was able to publish, you know, I was able to draft and get these LinkedIn posts, like five of them, to a really, really good point in 15 minutes," my first question to you would be, do you think it makes sense then to plan out like a month of LinkedIn posts, and have that be an hour and a half of that day, and check that off?
• 20:01
  And then we use more of that time to figure out like, you know, graphics, carousels, like short videos or something. You know, like I would be like, "That's awesome that you cut that time in half.
• 20:11
  Do you think that you should just expand on that? And then what else can we add on top of it?" But it's not necessarily more about, okay, we've been able to produce now five LinkedIn posts that we're pretty happy with.
• 20:22
  We should produce 50. It's like this was already a part of our plan, so like can you just use it to speed up the outputs that you had expected? Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's where I've landed of like
• 20:38
  once we know what good output looks like in terms of like this is the appropriate cadence, how do you sort of physically in the day like fill out the gaps of time with something that feels product...
• 20:47
  It's almost more of a feeling though that I'm getting to. Like I don't have any shortage of work to do. I don't have any like doubt that I'm... Doc's content strategy is... It's just that like everything feels hard.
• 20:58
  Like everything-- all the easy work is out of the way, and just all the work feels hard now, and it feels like very vacuous. And part of that is just becoming a leader, I think.
• 21:07
  Like I think when you become a more strategic person in a company, part of your job is like then driving productivity in others.
• 21:13
  But then part of it is just like making the right decisions, and if you're making the right decisions, then you're doing your job. And I think part of... Like we're all becoming
• 21:22
  with like infinite production machines in our hands, we're all just having to become strategists. And of course we're not there yet. Like l-let's be clear, there's still lots of rote work to be done.
• 21:33
  But there's less, and there will be less and less over the next five years.
• 21:38
  So but I do think we have to get more comfortable with like making good choices as a productive use of our time and day, and sometimes choices just like take weird routes to get there.
• 21:49
  Like sometimes you have to tinker with things, or you have to read a bunch, or you have to just go for a walk, right? There's different ways to land there.
• 21:55
  Do you guys typically have like your task lists that you have like written down in your notebook? Or you've probably automated this already to WYSIWYG into your calendars or something like Jimmy. But like do...
• 22:09
  Like I'm still like I have my task list of like my three to five most important things, and at the end of the day, I like wanna check those off.
• 22:17
  I want that physical satisfaction of crossing a line through it, and then repeating the next day. Like, and those actions make me feel I set out to do what I meant to do.
• 22:28
  I feel like I do that in fits and spurts, where like, like I have index cards, and I'll write out my day, and then if I do... I feel great if I do that, if I plan the day and then actually do that thing.
• 22:38
  But then I sort of get away from it, then I come back to it. I have been recently using a tool called RescueTime, which is pretty good.
• 22:44
  Like there's lots of tools like this, like Sunsama is a popular like time blocking tool. Freedom is another one.
• 22:50
  I like RescueTime because you like, you start a focus session with a specific task, and then while that's going, it blocks like a, a whole list of distracting things, you know.
• 23:01
  So like if you do get distracted, like I often do, like you just, you can't do it. You can't go on Twitter. You can't go on YouTube, you know. I... So I feel like I have to have like some...
• 23:10
  like create my own constraints.
• 23:13
  I feel like I've always sort of aspired to this like very systematic approach to like blocking my calendar and prioritizing tasks, but I feel like in reality it's like it's just always changing.
• 23:23
  Maybe it's that I'm not disciplined enough. I was a really big fan of blocking off my calendar for everything.
• 23:29
  Like I've done like articles and had a lot of conversations about productivity in the past, and like, so I would have like deep focus afternoons or deep focus days.
• 23:39
  And then because a lot of my meetings were more internal, I was able to have a little bit more flexibility with them, so I considered meeting days more like idea dates.
• 23:50
  Like I knew I wouldn't necessarily get as much done, quote unquote, but like we were moving everything forward.
• 23:55
  And then I think, like Eric, you touched on this too, I think I have a different perspective on all this as well because, A, working with a lot of HR people, B, having a global workforce where I was working with the UK, Australia.
• 24:09
  Like my days were just inherently flexible, so like looking for a job that actually has more of that traditional 9:00 to 5:00 would be a deterrent for me, because sometimes I'm most productive like, I don't know, like in late evening when everyone's logged off but Australia was just logging on.
• 24:30
  And I know that gets into your kind of 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, which I think is a really, really good point.Yeah.
• 24:37
  I do have, like, a notebook right in front of me where I list, like, three things every day and check 'em off and... Or if, like, on a Friday I'll say, "Remember, on Monday, you have... these are the priorities."
• 24:47
  And then I do a mix of calendar blocking, where I'm like, "Okay, I should spend roughly this amount of time each week on this thing."
• 24:52
  And then I also have, like, a super elaborate project management system, but that's just, like, a backlog of tasks, right? And there are three... So I sort of manage myself.
• 25:01
  And then, like, a content calendar of like, "Okay, we need to launch this promotion. This work has to happen by then."
• 25:07
  So there's sort of, like, different pressures on me from different directions of, like, here's the work on my plate today, here's the things that have to fit in these, by dates, and then here's, like, this giant backlog of stuff that, like, if there's time for it, let's do it.
• 25:19
  And I feel like most people probably operate in kind of that fluid space.
• 25:23
  But yeah, I think just the nature of the work keeps changing, and that's what's, like, my big question is floating around in my head right now, of, like, what's on those task lists keeps changing.
• 25:32
  Well, I feel like we should try to, like, summarize. Yeah. Like, what are our takeaways from this?
• 25:35
  Like, one, one thing we actually didn't talk about that I ac- but I feel like is an important takeaway is alignment with the rest of your team/your manager to make sure that...
• 25:43
  You know, I feel like as there's, like, more opportunities to do research and tinker and et cetera, to, like, just kinda sorta check in now and then to be like, "Is this...
• 25:51
  Do you feel like this is a good use of my time?" You know what I mean? Like, have, from your perspective as someone more senior in the company, like, kinda, like, are my tasks aligned with business objectives?
• 26:00
  And then I think another really important thing is, like, vibes. Just vibes over data. Like, do you feel... Like, is it if you feel good at the end of the day, like, you know, you'll feel better about work.
• 26:08
  You'll feel calmer. You'll feel more focused. You know, like, whether you check lots of tasks off in ClickUp or Asana or whatever, that doesn't really matter.
• 26:17
  You know, it's like if you put a big chunk of time into something important, that's really good.
• 26:22
  And then I think, Chloe, you had mentioned, like, sort of creating space for the kinda, like, you know Google does this with their, like, 20% days.
• 26:29
  I don't know if they do that anymore, but, like, they were famous for, for a while.
• 26:31
  Like, kinda like creating that space for yourself or, like, encouraging your team to sort of set aside time for, like, those things that, like, just are not... They're not on, like, the important and urgent quadrant,
• 26:44
  you know? But, like, they're sort of, like, important and not urgent. And, like, carving out space collectively for those types of things.
• 26:51
  Yeah, and I think that's a good point, 'cause the way that I think of it too, I do kind of a twist on the Eisenhower Matrix. We talked about it before. So I do a mix of, like, impact and effort.
• 27:02
  So to your point earlier, it's like if automating X will eventually save us, like, 12 hours of work down the line or automate something that we know we're gonna be doing time and time again, and it only took me, you know, four hours to set up, then that's relatively low effort for, like, potentially a massive impact.
• 27:22
  So, like, as a leader, I would say, "Okay, if you think you can get there, that's super interesting to me. Like, go build it, and I'll give you a half day to see if you can figure it out.
• 27:32
  Bring in the rest of the team to see if we can, like, brainstorm on this." But
• 27:37
  I think as a manager, if I found out my direct report was just spending, like, 16 hours a week hanging out on AI tools and not having any real sense of purpose or direction, and other things weren't getting done, like, yeah, I'd be pretty irritated at that.
• 27:55
  So I do think alignment and communication about it just needs to become kinda, like, the new norm. I feel like there's a lot of that happening right now. [laughs] Yeah. I have a couple takeaways.
• 28:05
  So one for me is that, like, an acknowledgement that having AI at our fingertips, like, isn't going to make the work easier. And I don't mean that in, like, a depressing way.
• 28:16
  I just mean, like, I think there's this feeling that, like, I should just be able to open up ChatGPT right now, and then, like, my job is done, and then, like, dot, dot, dot. Like, and then what, right?
• 28:27
  But, like, w- the reality is, like, that happens, and then you have to... That gives the opportunity to some, like, deeper meaningful work.
• 28:33
  And so I think the takeaway I've been trying to give to myself is, like, use the output gains rather than just, like, pile on more output, like Chloe was saying, is but then use that time to do more energizing things in your role, like whatever that is, that gets you kind of inspired about the work and makes you more creative.
• 28:51
  So for me, that's, like, talking to customers, like, doing more case study interviews, things like that.
• 28:56
  Like, I always get excited or, like, once I hear them excited about the product, I'm like, "Oh yeah, I'm not just, like, part of this capitalism." Like, I'm helping somebody, and their life is better, right?
• 29:04
  I'm not just, like, this workhorse. Whatever. Like, meeting with your sales team and learning. You know, whatever that is for you.
• 29:10
  I think trying to use the productivity gains not just to, like, add more, more, more is the way I've been trying to think about it.
• 29:17
  And then I do think also I've been trying to remind myself not to get too existential about it in terms of, like, we're still not at this place that we're like th- there's so much output or there's, like, so much content that, like, content doesn't mean anything anymore.
• 29:31
  Like, people k- keep talking about that, but I don't think we're there yet. So to, like, ground myself in, like, it's still okay to be like, "As long as I made 10 blog posts, I did my job." Right?
• 29:40
  [laughs] Like, that, you know, check all these boxes of quality and whatever. Yeah, I don't think anyone's figured it out.
• 29:45
  Like, I looked at articles from, like, JP Morgan, Inc., and then, like, a few LinkedIn posts from people that are at Content Marketing World right now, and it's all wildly different opinions.
• 29:56
  [laughs] Like, and I think that's what it is right now. It's a lot of opinions, and I think you just need to figure out what works best for you in your day-to-day. And, you know, I think we're all on a journey [laughs]
• 30:11
  right now. Definitely. I feel like that is actually the perfect segue to promote Superpath Pro.
• 30:17
  [laughs] Because I feel like, honestly, if you don't have people to talk to about some of the, like, truly, like, existential changes happening in content, not just content, but, like, just work more broad- or tech, I guess, tech work more broadly, like, you start to feel like, "Oh my gosh, am I the only one that feels this way?"
• 30:32
  But then, like, you join a community like Superpath, and you find out, oh, I'm not. A lot of people are experiencing this.
• 30:37
  And then, like, in the context of Slack and some of the other, like, very structured ways we have for people to communicate, like our one-on-ones and the monthly group calls, the...
• 30:45
  which we call the Superpath Social, like, there's just so much opportunity to swap ideas, you know, to, like, vent a bit if you need to vent. Have little mini therapy sessions. They're great. Totally. Totally.
• 30:57
  So and speaking of existential questions, I had this one, like, in the middle of the night the other night. I was like, "Should we call it Superpath Pro if there's not a free version anymore? Like, is it just Superpath?"
• 31:07
  You know? I don't know. Oh, yeah. I've asked that question before, so I like to think I've infiltrated your dreams. [laughs] How much... I mean, you just have to make new sweatshirts. I feel like that's [laughs] Yeah.
• 31:21
  But anyways, yeah, superpath.co if you wanna learn more about that. And then as always, Tomso and Eric, thank you for being on the podcast. We'll put links to- Oh my God.
• 31:29
  You guys are gonna need to work on those nicknames, please. [laughs] We'll have links to everybody's LinkedIn in the show notes for this one. And, and we'll see you next week, and hopefully we'll see you in Slack too.
• 31:39
  Thanks, guys. Thanks, Jimmy. [outro music]